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Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

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Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#281

Post by milesrout »

diebir wrote: post #100

Oracle is set to repeat the trajectory of SCO. Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres. The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad", and when forced, it ends up with Postgres anyway. Oracle used to survive in significant part by the support of the "database administrators" class. This layer of support is also becoming thinner…

>The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad", and when forced, it ends up with Postgres anyway.

Anyone that equates SQL with "old and bad" is, not to put too fine a point on it, ignorant and/or stupid.

>Except for Java, that is. The current tech is powered by Linux and there isn't really anything as big as Java on Linux. Python has been pretty significant and Go is making inroads, but the default is all Java. It is going to be interesting to watch how this will play out.

I don't know where you get this idea from. The most popular languages on Linux are Perl, Bash, Python, C and C++.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#282

Post by ktRolster »

lmm wrote: post #210
ed_blackburn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like maven, you're going to need a padded cell when you move to nuget.

I really like maven, so if there's an even more maven-ey thing around then sign me up.

nuget is frequently disparaged even in the C# community. I personally would say Maven is much cleaner, if also a bit more strict.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#283

Post by StreamBright »

diebir wrote: post #100

Oracle is set to repeat the trajectory of SCO. Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres. The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad", and when forced, it ends up with Postgres anyway. Oracle used to survive in significant part by the support of the "database administrators" class. This layer of support is also becoming thinner…

>> Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres.

I am not sure about the NoSQL part. I see it as more and more companies providing data access to different most-definitely-SQL databases other than Oracle. Postgres even has a migration page: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Oracle_to_Postgres_Conversi...

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#284

Post by waqf »

Oletros wrote: post #113
Spivak wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Purpose of the use -- Gogole's use wasn't transformative, in fact it was explicitly the opposite. * Nature of the use -- Google could try to argue that their use was for the public benefit, but since the Android platform exists for business interests it probably shouldn't qualify. * Amount and Substantiality -- Google basically took it all. There's no case here. They took not just the signatures but their semantic…

> They took not just the signatures but their semantic meaning What's the difference between the signature of an API and the semantic meaning?

If you write a function int makeHash(int) which computes a trapdoor function, and I write a function int makeHash(int) which prepares breakfast and returns a status code, then they have the same signature but different semantic meaning.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#285

Post by StreamBright »

tlogan wrote: post #192
diebir wrote: post #100

Oracle is set to repeat the trajectory of SCO. Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres. The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad", and when forced, it ends up with Postgres anyway. Oracle used to survive in significant part by the support of the "database administrators" class. This layer of support is also becoming thinner…

The problem is the following: problems that Oracle products are solving are very hard. On other hand, our SV startup culture is all about making some quick websites and get rich schemes. So the conclusion is: Oracle is here to stay.

It is so hard that a handful of opensource projects and 1x other companies solved it successfully (talking about the DB) and they bought most of the other tech instead of developing in-house. I am not sure which hard problem they are trying to solve but I am pretty sure that most of their offerings are overpriced. Oracle is here to stay as much as any other dinosaur from the past. They might be able to pivot to the cloud era (not too successfully yet) or they revenue is slowly going to decrease together with their significance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#286

Post by waqf »

Spivak wrote: post #144
mjw1007 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work Oracle copyrighted (and registered) was their implementation of Java SE as a whole, method bodies and all. Google copied only the interface. If someone copies a paragraph of my novel and claims fair use, I won't get very far on the amount-and-substantiality front by saying "but they basically took all of the part that they copied".

I think it depends if you consider the part that was copied to be a standalone work. The fact that Google is able to create a separate implementation based only on the API design documents seems to suggest that it's a separate work that has meaning unto itself. Would you make the same argument if you copied the entire forward from a novel?

Your argument begs the question. You might as well argue "The fact that you were able to write a new novel around the word 'the' that you copied from my novel seems to suggest that the word 'the' is a separate work that has meaning unto itself."

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#287

Post by ktRolster »

technofiend wrote: post #38
grenoire wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you that hateful of Java that you are blind to the implications of an Oracle win? It won't be just Java 'dying.'

Let's assume Oracle wins on appeal... What's next? Is everyone suddenly writing .Net code? Or are we left to find languages with lapsed copyrights? Fortran IV and Snobol are the new hotness! Everyone in to the pool!

It depends on the details of the ruling (the court could decide to pass such a narrow judgement that it only affects Oracle). Here is an analysis of how the rulings (up until now) affect the software world: http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/x-1.html

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#288

Post by [deleted] »

Spivak wrote: post #130
radicalbyte wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The semantic meaning of the signatures IS the API. The whole forms the interface. This includes bugs, weird behaviour, shortcomings.

Right! That's why I believe that Google's claim that it was 'just the method signatures' doesn't really hold up since they took not just the statement of the interface, but what each part does and how they interact. The only part Google didn't take was the source describing how to do it.

[deleted]

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#289

Post by StreamBright »

mattzito wrote: post #235
sb8244 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hard problems are they solving that can't be solved with OSS today (tech problems)? I've heard things about their business apps division (business problems) and I can't say I particularly believe in their future there versus smaller focused companies.

So - I'm definitely not willing to go as far as the GP was with their statement, but Oracle's database technology is pretty amazing. I love postgres, Spark, NoSQL, etc. and think the progress they have made is amazing, but Oracle's database from a raw featureset is incredible. - Shared-something database clustering - true scale-out database clustering without writing sharding logic into your application, worrying abo…

Yes I agree with Oracle's database technology being amazing. It was born in an era when disk space was expensive and the only data storing mechanism that most developers know was transactional ACID SQL stores. However we are living in an era when disk is cheap, data volumes grew way beyond a single node capacity and we have a handful of different approaches when it comes to store data on disk. We also have much better understanding on tradeoffs in this world (CAP, etc.).

I have moved a bunch of companies from MySQL/Oracle to scalable key-value stores having much better operational characteristics than the SQL ones. Was it hard? Hell yes, we had to educate developers about not having transactions, network partitions, order of operations and a bunch of things that solutions like OracleDB hides from you. Was it worth it? Absolutely, we had 99.99% yearly uptime while the previous SQL based solution was somewhere in the 90.00 - 95.00 range. Did we save money? Absolutely, the licensing cost and the fact that we do not need beefy boxes around payed off. Is this relevant to the subject as Oracle is in trouble or not? I am not sure. If the most of money coming from the government and fortune 100 than probably not.

I am in the same boat like other here on HN, I prefer to build systems myself that I understand 100%, and trying to avoid using technology like Oracle as much as I can based on the experience with support and the pricing. Again, I mostly work with startups and companies where the budget cannot be blown on SQL licenses.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#290

Post by dreamcompiler »

secstate wrote: post #254
coolgeek wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad" I think that what you mean is: - they don't understand the relational model - they don't understand the tradeoffs of ACID vs BASE - they never bothered to actually learn SQL - they *think* that they have "big data" Don't get me wrong - there are compelling use cases for, and decent products for, every class of non-relational database. But the…

PostgresQL is an RDBMS and has increasingly been demonstrated as able to hold it's own against closed source rivals. I think the OPs tossing NOSQL in there was poor form, and I think "SQL engines" could be replaced with DBAs. The world still needs RDBMS and we desperately need people who understand them from an engineering perspective. But as an average app developer, I can scale my product to serve hundreds of thous…

What can Oracle do that Postgres can't, then? Can Oracle function with less RAM than Postgres?
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